My (longish) review of Roberto Saviano’s _Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples’ Organized Crime System_ is “now out”:http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071210/farrell in _The Nation_. I liked the book quite a lot – as I say in the review it’s a little like Ryszard Kapuscinkski’s melanges of fiction and journalism, but it’s far starker, more direct, and angrier in its conclusions. One of the things I found most interesting about the book (although I don’t think his argument ultimately works), is Saviano’s efforts to connect together the Camorra and global capitalism. This is something that the “NYT reviewer”:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/books/14grim.html didn’t get – he complains that the first chapter of the book (on Chinese smugglers) doesn’t say anything about the Camorra at all. As I read the book, that was rather the point that Saviano was trying to make – that the fundamental problem lies not so much in the florid stories about the Camorra clans as in the underbelly of globalization; the myriads of clandestine and informal markets and of relationships between the legal and illegal economies that help sustain global capitalism. The book is at least as much about markets as about crime – two extended quotes after the jump give some of the flavor.
The Nuvolettas, in cooperation with the Nettuno and Polverino subclans, also altered narcotraffic investment strategies, creating a popular shareholding system for cocaine. A 2004 Naples DDA [anti-mafia unit – HF] investigation revealed that the clan was a llowing everyone to participate in the acquisition of cocaine via intermediaries. Retirees, workers and small businessmen would hand over money to agents, who then reinvested it in drug lots. Investing your pension of 600 euros in cocaine meant that you’d double your money in a month. The only guarantee was the middleman’s word, but the investment proved regularly advantageous. The profit far outweighed the risk, especially when compared with what one would have made in bank interest. The only disadvantage was organizational; small investors were often required to stash pats of cocaine – a way to distribute the supply and make it practically impossible to sequester.
and
Cemeteries periodically perform exhumations, removing what younger gravediggers call the superdead, those buried for more than forty years. The cemetery directors are supposed to call specialized firms to dispose of the bodies, caskets, and everything else, down to the votive lamps. Removal is expensive, so the directors bribe the gravediggers to throw everything together on a truck: dirt, rotting caskets, and bones. In February 2006, the Caserta NAS … discovered that so many dead had been dumped in Santa Maria Capua Vetere that people crossed themselves when they passed by, as if it were a cemetery. Young boys would steal the rubber gloves from their mothers’ kitchens and dig with hands and spoons for skulls and intact rib cages. Flea market vendors pay up to 100 euros for a skull with white teeth. A rib cage with all the ribs in place could bring up to 300 euros. There’s no market for shin, thigh or arm bones; hands, yes, but they decompose easily in the soil. Skulls with blackened teeth are worth 50 euros. There’s not much of a market for them; potential buyers are not repulsed by the idea of death, apparently, but by tooth enamel that eventually starts to decay
{ 56 comments }
vavatch 11.27.07 at 8:41 pm
Gosh, next these people will be making out that stalinism was really “state capitalism” all along! Remember: if you don’t like it, it must be because of capitalism.
perianwyr 11.27.07 at 9:26 pm
Not sure how that’s relevant, I don’t see “capitalism” used as a pejorative, only a descriptive.
JP Stormcrow 11.27.07 at 9:34 pm
Ah yes, the fine, blurry line between the Camorra and Halliburton.
derrida derider 11.28.07 at 2:00 am
Hmm – I just re-watched “Godfather III” on the weekend. It’s not as good a movie as the first two in the trilogy, but interestingly it was pretty much on this theme – the blurry boundary between many formal markets and gangsterism.
Bernard Yomtov 11.28.07 at 3:12 am
the fundamental problem lies not so much in the florid stories about the Camorra clans as in the underbelly of globalization; the myriads of clandestine and informal markets and of relationships between the legal and illegal economies that help sustain global capitalism.
Isn’t this a little silly? Clandestine and informal markets exist in all sorts of environments, and always have. Why anyone thinks they are uniquely, or even particularly strongly, associated with (shudder) globalization or modern capitalism is mysterious.
Randy Paul 11.28.07 at 3:49 am
What made me livid after reading the book is the fact that so many of the citizens of southern Italy suffer to make places like Tuscany and Umbria so lovely.
The last section of the book will haunt me forever.
Walt 11.28.07 at 4:32 am
Is the first comment a joke?
Brad Holden 11.28.07 at 5:26 am
A selection from the first chapter is available off of the NYT’s website, just follow the review link.
The prose is, to me, dialed up to 11.
dsquared 11.28.07 at 9:32 am
The only disadvantage was organizational; small investors were often required to stash pats of cocaine – a way to distribute the supply and make it practically impossible to sequester.
This is actually quite a substantial organisational problem as cocaine (unlike opiates) is a perishable commodity.
Ah yes, the fine, blurry line between the Camorra and Halliburton
I’m hoping this is sarcasm. The line between organised crime, government and business isn’t fine – it’s blurry. This is incredibly well documented; it’s about the only useful thing to have come out of the whole JFK assassination research industry.
Tracy W 11.28.07 at 9:38 am
that the fundamental problem lies not so much in the florid stories about the Camorra clans as in the underbelly of globalization;
I’m sorry, I’m lost here. What is the fundamental problem?
Surely the bad thing about the Camorra clans is the people they kill and/or torture and the other harms they do, say by illegally disposing of toxic waste, not stories by themselves, however florid?
Ahd how is “the underbelly of globalisation” a fundamental problem? It strikes me as being more likely that whatever causes the underbelly of globalisation is the fundamental problem.
In the cases described in the review, I would say that the fundamental problem is that toxic waste is far more expensive to dispose of legally than illegally. This argues for government subsidy of waste disposal (toxic and non-toxic).
John M 11.28.07 at 10:20 am
“it was pretty much on this theme – the blurry boundary between many formal markets and gangsterism”
Surely the point of the Godfather (notwithstanding the overheated sentimentality final episode) is that the line is not blurry, that Michael Corleone fools himself that it is because of emotional commitments that he cannot shed and pays a grievous price (every time I think I am out …). To anybody in the audience and to Michael’s wife, the line is very clear. The same is true in the Sopranos. For me one of the most compelling strands of that drama was watching Carmella trying to persuade herself that she was in a complex ethical position, recruiting priests to cover her metaphysical arse, when deep down she recongnised it was clear cut money for murder. She just couldn’t resist those diamonds and furs.
John M 11.28.07 at 10:23 am
“This is incredibly well documented; it’s about the only useful thing to have come out of the whole JFK assassination research industry.”
I’m not quite sure what to make of this. Assuming that anything sueful came out of the JFK asassination industry, isn’t it just the knowledge that governments sometimes engage in illegal activity or will use cats paws in the underworld to do it for them? That’s not ‘blurry’, it’s just governments doing illegal things. No blurrier than Watergate, surely?
John M 11.28.07 at 10:24 am
“Sueful”. That was on purpose, obviously.
Great Zamfir 11.28.07 at 12:20 pm
“I’m sorry, I’m lost here. What is the fundamental problem? Surely the bad thing about the Camorra clans is the people they kill and/or torture and the other harms they do, say by illegally disposing of toxic waste, not stories by themselves, however florid?”
I suppose most florid stories will be about killing and torture and other harms. But those are examples, and could well be small scale. The business-like character is potentially much more disturbing, because it makes the crime organizations larger and stronger, and thereby increasing the number of ‘florid stories’.
Tracy W 11.28.07 at 12:44 pm
John, I think Derrida Derider was referring to a practical matter of how formal markets blurr into informal ones, not the immoral decisions made by gangsters.
Examples include that a shopkeeper may pay protection money to a gangster, and also be dutifully up to date with his taxes. Or the qualified doctor who treats the poor and also treats bullet wounds, no questions asked. Or the fish&chip shop owner who accepts money for his used fat. Or the chemical factory manager who takes the lowest quote for disposing of toxic waste. Or gangsters laundering money through legal betting means such as casinos and horse-racing.
dsquared 11.28.07 at 1:07 pm
12: no, there are lots of cases where it is very unclear whether what you’re looking at is the government using criminal organisations for political ends or criminal organisations manipulating the government for criminal ends (or for that matter, non-government political entities using and being used by both the government and criminals for all sorts of ends). There are a number of key figures in assassinology where it is very unclear indeed whether their primary loyalty (or their motivation for particular actions) was criminal, political, intelligence-linked, bureaucratic or selfish. If you’ve got someone who is simultaneously a Mafioso, a CIA agent, an FBI informant, a Cuban nationalist and an embezzler (and the JFK files are chock full of these characters)[1], then your interpretation of a lot of his important actions is going to be very dependent on what sort of narrative you’re trying to fit him into. A lot of these key events and narratives are overdetermined by criminal, political, intelligence and selfish motives, and blurry for that reason.
[1] and my working assumption is that there’s nothing particular about the JFK assassination literature; one would probably turn up all sorts of these characters in looking at nearly any significant political event if one paid as much attention to it as the JFK buffs do. As Peter Dale Scott says, the sheer volume of these multiply-connected characters and their roles in all sorts of areas of public life is actually much more interesting in and of itself than as a source of clues on the way to a cheap whodunnit.
Tracy W 11.28.07 at 2:04 pm
The business-like character is potentially much more disturbing, because it makes the crime organizations larger and stronger, and thereby increasing the number of ‘florid stories’.
Much more disturbing than what? And larger and stronger than what?
Matt Weiner 11.28.07 at 2:43 pm
If you don’t want to get into the epistemological problems surrounding the JFK assassination, I believe the Whitey Bulger case illustrates what dsquared is talking about, with its close ties between the Boston Irish mob and the FBI (who had a common enemy in La Cosa Nostra).
I make no representation as to how this bears on capitalism.
stuart 11.28.07 at 2:46 pm
In the cases described in the review, I would say that the fundamental problem is that toxic waste is far more expensive to dispose of legally than illegally. This argues for government subsidy of waste disposal (toxic and non-toxic).
If the government subsidies waste disposal, doesn’t that increase the supply of toxic and non-toxic waste? i.e. it basically makes companies that make more waste less uncompetitive, and hence will tend towards an increase in waste production (or a decrease in waste reduction). It would seem better for the government to make waste disposal easy, but expensive (or at least not subsidised – so the true costs are passed to the company, and through that to its customers), and fines/sentencing for illegal waste disposal high, and enforcement decent, to reduce the amount of lawbreakers.
John M 11.28.07 at 2:50 pm
Yes, I accept that there are individuals that attempt to blur the boundaries between legal and illegal activity, serving various masters, but the boundary isn’t really blurred for all that, is it? We are quite clear which of their activities is wrong and that the politicians who the wrong actions are acting criminally. The talk of blurred boundaries, for me, implies that there is point at which it is genuinely difficult to know ehther your action is criminal or nopt. This will sometimes happen in very technidcal situations, but when it comes to gangsterism Vs free market capitalism in the usual sense, or law enforcement Vs criminality in the usual way it is always pretty clear. It’s just that there are a lot of naughty people who ignore the line for ptofit and a lot of government agencies who let them get away with it.
Tom T. 11.28.07 at 3:00 pm
I think “blurry” is being used in more than one sense in this thread, sometimes as to legality and sometimes as to motive.
Tracy W 11.28.07 at 3:20 pm
Stuart – the trouble with making waste disposal is expensive is that it creates an incentive to load it into your car, drive the car somewhere where you likely won’t be seen, and chuck it over the fence, onto a farmer’s land or a national park or wherever.
There are two theoretical ways I know of to stop illegal dumping of waste:
– a really, really high level of survelliance so every offender is caught
– punishing those offenders who are caught so severely that no one will run even a low risk of being caught.
The first option would be very expensive and I’d be concerned about government invasion of privacy.
The second, well, when really tough penalties are imposed typically juries grow reluctant to convict. Would you be willing to send someone to jail for life for dumping some waste?
Not to mention the problems with convicting a member of the Camorra. The penalties for murdering or torturing someone in Italy I assume are already very high, but judging by the stories they still do it.
Normally I favour making polluters pay, but in the case of waste disposal, the dangers of illegal dumping are so large, and the costs of stopping illegal dumping strike me as so high as to make me favour subsidising its disposal even at the price of increasing the overall amount of waste generated. In my view, the moral principle that “childrens’ lives should not be put at risk by toxic waste dumping” outweighs the “polluters pay” principle.
SamChevre 11.28.07 at 3:35 pm
Stuart,
The better solution (as I understand it, this is the German structure) is to charge for waste GENERATION, and use the money collected for waste disposal. By changing the point at which costs are incurred, you reduce the incentives for illegal dumping, without encouraging waste production.
Tracy W 11.28.07 at 3:48 pm
John M – Yes, I accept that there are individuals that attempt to blur the boundaries between legal and illegal activity, serving various masters, but the boundary isn’t really blurred for all that, is it?
Well, the NZ government collects tax on illegal activities. This is because IRD has more powers than the police, but cannot share information with the police. A wise criminal will pay tax to IRD, because if they don’t IRD may sue them for due taxes, then the police use the result of the public courts to put the criminal in jail for whatever crime they were committing.
Therefore anyone who has received money from the NZ government has received money tainted by criminal associations.
Does that mean it is immoral to take a job working for the NZ government?
The talk of blurred boundaries, for me, implies that there is point at which it is genuinely difficult to know ehther your action is criminal or nopt.
This assumes that you know what the law is. And not just the law, but all the laws, since possibly one could apply to your particular situation. I do not know all the laws of my country. Do you?
A NZ MP broke the law by applying for Dutch citizenship while he was an MP. There is nothing in NZ law stopping an MP from having dual citizenship. Just there’s an obscure law preventing MPs from applying for another citizenship while they are MPs. The Dutch government changed its laws in a way that made the MP eligible for Dutch citizenship. So he applied – a crime that’s hardly on the level of murder or torture. (He was a Government MP, and the Government of the day wound up retrospectively changing that law).
a lot of government agencies who let them get away with it
There’s a lot of government agencies breaking the law themselves. For example 14 people in NZ died because the Department of Conservation had illegally and unsafely constructed a platform over the creek, and it had collapsed under the viewers. http://library.christchurch.org.nz/Kids/NZDisasters/CaveCreek.asp
Tracy W 11.28.07 at 4:22 pm
The better solution (as I understand it, this is the German structure) is to charge for waste GENERATION, and use the money collected for waste disposal. By changing the point at which costs are incurred, you reduce the incentives for illegal dumping, without encouraging waste production.
Actually you create an incentive for people to lie about how much waste they are generating, and put the excess in the car and drive the car out into the country one night and tip it over a fence.
To avoid this the government can make assumptions about how much waste is being generated, and then charge people on that basis, independently of how much they actually generate. In which case you’re charging people a tax and then subsidising the disposal of waste, which is my preferred solution anyway.
SamChevre 11.28.07 at 4:47 pm
Ah–I didn’t explain it clearly enough.
German system as I understand it:
If it will need to be disposed of, you pay a fee at manufacture for the waste disposal. So the price of anything you buy includes a cost for disposing of the waste it creates.
Tracy W 11.28.07 at 4:57 pm
Ah, thanks for explaining, Sam. Sounds like a value-added tax to me.
Out of curiousity, how do the Germans charge for waste created by R&D activities?
SamChevre 11.28.07 at 5:16 pm
I don’t know; I’m only slightly familiar with the German system.
The point of the tax/fee is that it works like a VAT, but it’s product-specific–so the foil/plastic layer packages (which have to go in a landfill) are much more expensive than the plain waxed paper ones (which can be recycled). Similarly, paint with non-toxic pigments and hardeners is taxed at a much lower rate than that with toxic pigments.
alkali 11.28.07 at 6:59 pm
dsquared (@9) writes:
cocaine (unlike opiates) is a perishable commodity
I did not know this. If you have cocaine in powder form in a plastic bag, is it really not shelf-stable? What happens to it, and over how much time?
Dan 11.28.07 at 7:02 pm
I would say that the fundamental problem is that toxic waste is far more expensive to dispose of legally than illegally. This argues for government subsidy of waste disposal (toxic and non-toxic).
It is a fundamental problem that robbing and then murdering people is cheaper than actually working for a living. This argues for government subsidy of muggers.
Watson Aname 11.28.07 at 8:14 pm
I would say that the fundamental problem is that toxic waste is far more expensive to dispose of legally than illegally. This argues for government subsidy of waste disposal (toxic and non-toxic).
Doesn’t this more argue for crippling non-compliance penalties? The fundamental issue is whether you allow an industry to externalize certain costs where this is practical, or make it impractical.
SamChevre 11.28.07 at 9:47 pm
Doesn’t this more argue for crippling non-compliance penalties? The fundamental issue is whether you allow an industry to externalize certain costs where this is practical, or make it impractical.
Crippling non-compliance penalties might work for large industry; they work very poorly for the person who finds an old bucket of paint, or a can of Raid, in the garage and wants to get rid of it.
Watson Aname 11.28.07 at 10:19 pm
32: That’s true, they’re different problems. Is your scenario a big contributer? In either case, most of that problem seems to go away if you make it easy. Most people don’t want to pollute this way, but if they don’t know how now to, or it’s a pain in the ass — then they’ll just dump it down the sink or whatever.
dsquared 11.29.07 at 8:05 am
If you have cocaine in powder form in a plastic bag, is it really not shelf-stable? What happens to it, and over how much time?
The alkaloids break down and it loses its potency. Crystallised powder cocaine is more stable than coca leaf or paste, but you still don’t want to leave it hanging around. Cocaine has very different economics from heroin, largely for this reason; opium resin is very stable, so you can transport it around the world for refining but cocaine needs to be manufactured near the source.
Tracy W 11.29.07 at 9:41 am
Dan – It is a fundamental problem that robbing and then murdering people is cheaper than actually working for a living. This argues for government subsidy of muggers.
Sigh. We want to stop people dumping toxic waste in unsafe ways. This can be done by making it cheaper to legally dispose of toxic waste in safe ways.
We don’t want people murdered. Making it easier to murder people does not help in achieving that goal.
There is no natural law that says that a solution that works for one problem is therefore the right solution for every single problem that ails humanity.
Watson – Doesn’t this more argue for crippling non-compliance penalties?
I assume that the Italian penalties for murder and torture are already rather crippling. If those are not deterring the Camorra from murdering and torturing people, I don’t see why crippling penalties for dumping toxic waste would deter them from dumping toxic waste.
There is also an enforcement problem. Say crippling penalties means that a factory would be shut down if it ever dumped toxic waste, at the cost of a couple of hundred jobs. How likely is a bunch of local jurors to agree to impose crippling penalties on that factory?
engels 11.29.07 at 3:32 pm
We don’t want people being mugged in unsafe ways. This can be done by making it cheaper to mug people in safe, humane ways, by providing government subsidies for muggers to spend on tasers, chloroform, rubber bullets, etc.
As long as it is disposed of legally toxic waste is g-r-r-eat! The more the better!
Watson Aname 11.29.07 at 5:21 pm
Tracy — by crippling, I mean the possibility has to be very real. What you want is penalties that are likely to be significantly more expensive than any gain made by non-compliance. You don’t often have to actual shut people down, just make it clear that by not playing along may drive themselves into the ground.
Compare to, say, forestry industry fines for cutting in the wrong area (e.g. a park) that amount to a small percentage of profit from the overcut.
engels 11.29.07 at 5:29 pm
I’m very surprised to hear that the legal penalties for murder do not deter the Mafia from murdering people. So their behaviour would be just the same in the absence of such penalties?
mq 11.29.07 at 10:18 pm
36: we don’t want people mugged using tasers or rubber bullets either. Really, try to follow the argument.
Your position only makes sense if toxics reduction in the manufacturing process is much, much cheaper than safe disposal of toxic by products in every case.
sara 11.30.07 at 12:19 am
It seems unlikely that anyone who uses cocaine would let it sit around, unsnorted / unsmoked, etc., long enough to go off, like time-expired aspirin!
Chocolate cake’s edible lifespan is also rarely tested.
engels 11.30.07 at 12:45 am
MQ – I know we don’t want people mugged using tasers, etc. That was kind of the point.
engels 11.30.07 at 4:20 am
Your position only makes sense if toxics reduction in the manufacturing process is much, much cheaper than safe disposal of toxic by products in every case.
I’m not sure what you think my ‘position’ is, since I haven’t stated it, but I don’t see how this can be true. For example, it would be reasonable to argue that we should reduce our production of toxic waste by a certain amount if doing so would incur a smaller disutility than the ‘safe’ disposal of the same amount of toxic waste. Not “very, very” much smaller and certainly not “in every case”. This smaller disutility is obviously not just a matter of financial cost (“cheaper”).
At any rate, the point of the analogy is clear. Like the two types of mugging, both types of behaviour (illegal dumping and legal disposal) are undesirable. Subsidising people to change from the first to the second is not necessarily a good idea–especially if a one effect of doing so is to increase additional incentives for the second–and Tracy’s implication to the contrary:
I would say that the fundamental problem is that toxic waste is far more expensive to dispose of legally than illegally. This argues for government subsidy of waste disposal
is wrong. It all depends on (a) the cost of the subsidy and (b) the costs (including intangible costs) of each of the behaviours in question. Unfortunately Tracy doesn’t seem interested in providing such details, preferring to rhetoricise about “children’s lives being put at risk” by illegal dumping, but without them her ‘argument’, and yours, remains so much hot air.
Walt 11.30.07 at 5:02 am
I have let chocolate cake go stale.
Tracy W 11.30.07 at 11:02 am
Engels:
I’m very surprised to hear that the legal penalties for murder do not deter the Mafia from murdering people. So their behaviour would be just the same in the absence of such penalties?
I am not sure what your point here is. Are you arguing that Roberto Saviano’s book is wrong, and the Camorra don’t murder people?
I am not an Italian. I am not an expert on Italy. I have assumed that the newspaper reports of judges being murdered and people being beaten up and the like were genuine. I am well aware I may be misinformed – I have never seen the Mafia or the Camorra murder or torture someone with my own eyes. But I have been told about so many crimes by the Mafia and Camorra by so many different people I am willing to give some credence to their statements.
As long as it is disposed of legally toxic waste is g-r-r-eat!
One source of toxic waste comes from medical facilities. Do you intend to reduce the number of blood samples doctors take, times bandages are changed, use of drains to remove pus, etc, in order to reduce the amount of toxic waste produced?
Tracy W 11.30.07 at 11:17 am
Engels:
would say that the fundamental problem is that toxic waste is far more expensive to dispose of legally than illegally. This argues for government subsidy of waste disposal
is wrong. It all depends on (a) the cost of the subsidy and (b) the costs (including intangible costs) of each of the behaviours in question. Unfortunately Tracy doesn’t seem interested in providing such details
I note that you also don’t seem interested in providing such details. I don’t provide any details because I don’t have the numbers. I assume this is why you don’t provide any details either. I think this is a case of the fridge calling the freezer white.
The problem with the sort of comprehensive study you apparently want someone else to carry out is that monitoring illegal dumping of toxic waste is incredibly difficult. People often fail to report illegal activity, even when the government passes a law obliging them to do so. Sometimes illegal dumping of toxic waste only comes to light years afterwards. I don’t think we will ever get the information to do a full comparison of the costs and benefits that you want to do.
In the absence of definitive knowledge, I do worry about small children being exposed to illegally-dumped toxic waste. I get the impression you think such worries are merely so much hot air, but I know what my worries are based on, and they are based on harms to real, living people. Calling them “hot air” will not suddenly make illegally-dumped toxic waste a non-problem.
engels 11.30.07 at 3:39 pm
There doesn’t need to be a complete comparison of the costs and benefits. But your argument is essentially CBA: you must think that the human and environmental costs of increased waste production, and the financial cost of your subsidy, is outweighed by the existing costs of illegal dumping. If you won’t provide estimates of these costs then it amounts to little more than rhetoric. What you consider ‘thinking of the children’ others see as ‘buying off criminals’; a rather futile debate.
Tracy W 11.30.07 at 5:02 pm
If you won’t provide estimates of these costs then it amounts to little more than rhetoric. What you consider ‘thinking of the children’ others see as ‘buying off criminals’; a rather futile debate.
Engels, I’m consciously using rhetoric to recast what people see as “buying off criminals” into “thinking of the children”. My object is to persuade people to switch away from kneejerk “polluter pays” reactions to consider what best protects people, including children.
Whether I will succeed is an empirical question, but I’ve seen rhetorical arguments work in the past. I don’t think that rhetoric is futile. And if we can’t get empirical estimates like what you want, then what do we have but rhetoric?
Tracy W 11.30.07 at 6:39 pm
By the way, Engels, why don’t you apply your statement “If you won’t provide estimates of these costs then it amounts to little more than rhetoric” to yourself? Why do you think I should hold myself to a debating line you don’t use?
Tracy W 11.30.07 at 6:47 pm
Watson – what fines do you plan to apply to the Mafia or the Cammorra for dumping toxic waste that are steeper than those already applicable for murder and torture? (Assuming that the Mafia and the Camorra actually do murder and torture people, Engels has not got back to me on that point yet).
As for more legitimate factories – you say “you don’t often have to shut factories down”, what I am skeptical about is whether the regulators can shut down any factory in practice.
engels 11.30.07 at 7:31 pm
By the way, Engels, why don’t you apply your statement “If you won’t provide estimates of these costs then it amounts to little more than rhetoric†to yourself?
Because “he who asserts must prove”. You claimed that–
the fundamental problem is that toxic waste is far more expensive to dispose of legally than illegally. This argues for government subsidy of waste disposal
I merely pointed out that you haven’t given any real reason why anybody else should believe it.
engels 11.30.07 at 8:11 pm
Yawn. There are high penalties for murder and yet the Mafia kill people. This does not mean that the behaviour of the Mafia is not responsive to legal incentives.
engels 11.30.07 at 8:23 pm
(Example: The Italian government introduces a one thousand euro fine for eating French Fries. Would this have any effect on the propensity of Mafioso types to eat French Fries? I rather think it would, despite the fact that, as you say, it is not “steeper than [the penalties] already applicable for murder and torture”.)
lemuel pitkin 11.30.07 at 10:14 pm
I can’t for the life of me see what Engles and tracy W are arguing about. We alla gree that:
1. We want less toxic waste produced.
2. What toxic waste is produced, we want disposed of safely (i.e. legally).
3. Goals 1 and 2 can be achieved through various mixes of legal requirements and price incentives.
Lowering the price of of disposing of toxic waste helps with goal 2, but undermines goal 1. On the other hand, preventing unsafe disposal of toxic waste purely through regulation may require impractically intense surveillance and/or heavy penalties. So the optimal policy is going to involve some mix of criminal penalties for unsafe disposal (Engels) and cost incentives/subsidies for safe disposal (Tracy).
The funny thing is, I bet if the two of them were on a committee that actually had to draw up a toxic-waste disposal policy for a local government, they would have no trouble reaching agreement.
lemuel pitkin 11.30.07 at 10:39 pm
also, I don’t see what the point is of comparing dumping to murder. First, the issue with dumping is the relative cost of dumping legally versus illegally; there’s no equivalent legal substitute for murder. And second, we ARE willing to devote a lot of police resources to investigating murders (which in any case are harder to conceal than illegal dumping) and have no problem imposing extremely severe penalties on people who are guilty of it. So price incentives to discourage murder make no sense.
engels 11.30.07 at 10:57 pm
Lemuel: Did you actually read the argument you claim to be adjudicating? That the optimal policy necessarily involves subsidies is really not self-evident. Really! Also, I haven’t advocated any “policy”. Assuming you did read it, you have demonstrated yourself to be even less capable of following an argument than Tracy is. Anyway, this is perhaps the most tedious discussion I have ever been involved in so I shall leave the two of you to misread what I wrote to your hearts’ content. Arrivederci!
lemuel pitkin 11.30.07 at 11:25 pm
Engles-
It’s sort of common sense, right?
Since there are limits to how high we can get the cost of illegal dumping, we also need to lower the cost of legal dumping. (Then raise the costs of production of toxic waste, if you like.)
It’s the same argument that says extremely harsh penalties for minor crimes are counterproductive, because they mean there is no additional penalty for e.g. killing someone in the course of a robbery.
It’s the same argument that makes needle exchanges a good idea even if you would also like to reduce heroin use.
It’s the same argument that leads to the distribution of condoms in prison even though prisoners aren’t supposed to be having sex.
It’s the same argument that leads to giving drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants, and not asking about immigration status when people call the police or the fire department, even if you would rather eliminate illegal immigration.
When the alternative to one antisocial act is another much more harmful one, it often makes sense to encourage the less harmful alternative.
I can’t for the life of me understand why you’re so resistant to this.
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